Thursday, February 3, 2011

iPad learning and fun with nsquared sticker book

While the debates around whether or not iPad will become widely adopted as a standard piece of every educational tool kit, governments, universities and independents schools are voting with their wallets. Some are doing it on a small scale in order to trial and assess the benefits, and others are reported to be engaging in widespread adoption plans.

The case seems clear to us, and whether or not iPads become the newest technology to be incorporated into formal education settings, we're continuing to create and deliver educational apps for the market. We truly believe that touch, integrated with collaborative and competitive learning experiences, highly influences learning retention. While most of the population sees touch as a new innovation, and some see it as a gimmick, I think we're forgetting that touch and physical interaction with our learning environments is not only completely natural, it's also been a part of of our formal and informal learning processes for many years. Even if you take out foundational learning which requires looking at, picking up and manipulating physical objects e.g. basic building blocks, Duplo and Lego; it remains part of our formal learning experiences and information exchange to the highest levels when we use hand writing to record notes, annotate diagrams, sketch out ideas, and even use a keyboard to express ourselves. A note on keyboards and handwriting here - research has shown that learning is better when we use hand writing rather than a keyboard, so it seems we're on the right track with bringing touch back to learning. Our latest touch app to hit the iTunes iPad app store. nsquared sticker book is designed to develop numeracy, pattern matching and object recognition skills. Designed for one or two players, sticker book needs each player to collect the correct numbers of each sticker and place them into their own sticker book. In its initial release, the app ships with 7 themed activities. There are more coming soon, and we're looking forward to sharing them with you and finding out what you think of it.